How an information technology expert can help ensure you’re making the right choices

As a company grows, its information technology (IT) needs to grow with it. But some areas may be overlooked in the day-to-day hustle of getting the job done. Companies should be considering options such as the cloud, looking at the security of their data and setting up a disaster recovery plan. An outside advisor can help you ask the right questions and identify areas of concern.

What is the first IT issue that growing businesses should look at?

As a business’s IT needs grow, companies need to consider whether cloud computing makes sense. If you aren’t familiar with cloud computing, it’s essentially remote access to applications and services via the internet; it gives you secure access to all your applications and data from any network device.

Would it be cost effective to take your company’s email to the cloud so that you don’t have to worry about maintaining data at your own location? When considering questions like these, companies should really weigh the pros and cons of taking that step. For instance, do you already have a location for your servers in-house, are you going to have remote offices, do you have a large traveling sales force? For a single location office, the cloud may not be a beneficial or cost effective step, but for a company with multiple locations or a traveling sales force, it could make perfect sense to have your data housed at a central location in the cloud so that everyone shares access.

How can an outside technology expert help determine your needs in the cloud?

Outside expert advice is definitely recommended because the industry is changing so quickly that the types of questions you need to ask and the way to ask them are changing daily. For example, does the cloud provider have multiple Internet connections coming in to eliminate service interruption? What is the cloud’s capacity? How much is your business going to be able to grow at your current facility without shortchanging yourself?

Security is another important area to ask about. A lot of data centers that house this equipment are having SOC Reports prepared to make sure they have the proper controls in place that ensure their data is secure and not at risk of being breached.

Too many companies understand that something could happen to them, but they put the blinders on and think that it won’t actually happen to them. There are a lot of things they can’t control, though, and that they may not have thought about. This is another area in which an outside technology expert can help. That person will know all of the questions that go into building a disaster recovery plan and make sure that plan can be executed if needed.